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Reply to "LED lighting question"

Please see my answers within the quote box

@msp posted:

All good questions - of which I know none of the answers.   As you can see I am more of a plug and play kinda of guy

however- your questions did make think - I didn’t have enough power so I turned up the voltage and ……lights It was a matter of too little voltage to turn on those LEDs

But with that said    I do need to figure out how much this power pack can power so this generates a couple other questions

1. while- more power seems obvious - that same lesser power lit them up on the AC side so  didn’t think that was the issue why is that? Probably different voltages set on AC side, vs the DC side.

2. I have attached a pic of the light I was powering at the lesser voltage - only four of those so it needs a lot less power yes probably, but they may also have different voltage requirements.

So is there a problem with mixing lights that have differing voltage needs? Yes.  If one set of LEDs is designed to run on 12VDC and another is intended to run on somewhere between 2 and 3 VDC they can't share the same power source, unless extra measures are taken.  12V will quickly burn out he lower voltage LEDs.

Thanks for your time and help

DC Electricity is somewhat analogous to water flowing through a hose.

Voltage is like Pressure.

Current (in Amps) is like the volume of water flowing at a given instant in time and is limited by the diameter of the hose.

In the transformer, current is limited by the size of wire in the transformer and is often different on different outputs.

Electrical power is (Volts X Amps) and is measured in Watts.  Using the analogy, water power is gallons per minute.

If you try to pass too much power through the transformer, it will overload usually tripping it's circuit breaker hopefully before overheating occurs.

AC and DC voltages are different, because in AC the current flow changes directions 60 times per second.

This is not meant to be all inclusive, but intended to provide a little better understanding of electricity.  I hope this is helpful.

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